Bear Necessity

by James Gould-Bourn

  “This is true,” Ivan said.

  “Actually,” said Danny, chewing his lip, “maybe you’re onto something.”

  “I am?” Ivan sounded surprised.

  “Do you think Alf would let me have some of that scrap wood from the site?”

  “I already ask,” said Ivan, shaking his head. “I wanted to build the shelves for Ivana, but Alf, he say no.” He pointed to three shelves cluttered with framed black-and-white family photographs that looked as if they’d been taken during a nineteenth-century blizzard.

  Danny frowned. “Those shelves?” he said, pointing.

  Ivan nodded.

  “Those exact shelves?”

  “Those exact shelves,” repeated Ivan.

  “I thought Alf said you couldn’t take the wood?”

  “He did. I take it anyway.”

  “How?”

  “I go at night. Is easy. I show you.”

  “You sure? Ivana would never forgive me if you went back to prison.” The words came out before Danny even realized what he’d said.

  “Prison? What prison?”

  “Nothing,” said Danny, eager to move on, but Ivan stared at him in a way that suggested neither of them would be moving anywhere until he explained. “Wherever you got those,” he said, pointing at Ivan’s tattoos.

  Ivan looked at his arms and frowned before a rare burst of laughter shot out of him so suddenly that Danny gripped the chair.

  “You think these are prison tattoos?” he said.

  “They’re not?” said Danny, surprised by the disappointment in his voice.

  “I am family man, Danny, not criminal man. These are from Yuri, not prison.”

  “You let your son tattoo you?”

  “No, I let man at tattoo shop tattoo me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Look,” said Ivan, rolling up his sleeves and placing his inked-up forearms on the table, “one day after work, I am very tired and so I fall asleep in chair. When I wake I see Yuri has pen and is making art all over me. On my arms, even my face. He was very young, five or six maybe, and he is having so much fun that I do not want to stop him, so I pretend to sleep until he is finished. When I open my eyes, I see what he has made. It is most beautiful thing I ever see. I love it so much I go to tattoo man that same day and ask him to make it forever.”

  “Absolutely no disrespect, because that is, quite possibly, the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard, but, well… couldn’t you have just taken a photograph?”

  “For what? To keep on telephone? To sit in picture frame? A telephone you can lose. A photograph you can lose. But these?” he said, tapping his arms. “You cannot lose arms.”

  “That’s not technically true—”

  “Of course is true! How do I lose arm? I cannot drop arm down back of couch. I cannot leave arm in supermarket trolley. I cannot forget arm in back of taxi. Is impossible.”

  “You’re right,” said Danny. Now didn’t seem the right time to talk about the ins and outs of dismemberment.

  “These,” said Ivan, smiling as he gently traced one of Yuri’s illegible scrawls with his finger, “are with me forever.”

  “I feel a bit bad now,” said Danny. “I always assumed you’d just, you know, murdered someone.”

  “I said the tattoos came from Yuri,” said Ivan. “I never said I have not murdered anybody.” He winked at Danny in a way that left him none the wiser as to whether his friend was telling the truth or not.

  “We should probably go,” said Danny, sliding from his seat and shuffling towards the door.

  “One minute. I just need to do something in kitchen. For Ivana.”

  “Anything I can help with?” said Danny, already knowing the answer but wanting to see his friend’s reaction.

  “No!” said Ivan, his voice uncharacteristically high. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I mean, no. Is fine.” He opened the door just wide enough to fit through, which was pretty much all the way.

  “Ivan?” said Danny. Ivan turned to face him. “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “You know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Just… thanks,” said Danny.

  Ivan frowned and shook his head. “You’re being embarrassment,” he said before disappearing into the kitchen.

  * * *

  The building site was encircled by a tall fence of wire mesh. The only way in or out was through two large iron gates that blocked the entrance, next to which sat a small hut with two guards playing cards inside. Powerful floodlights shone down from all four corners of the perimeter, their beams converging in the middle where most of the prefab offices were located. The areas directly beneath the lights saw very little illumination, and nobody saw Danny and Ivan lurking in the shadows.

  “Here,” said Ivan, handing something to Danny in the dark.

  “Is this really necessary?” said Danny, unrolling the fabric to reveal a black balaclava. “We’re stealing wood, not storming the Iranian Embassy.”

  “Cameras,” said Ivan, swirling his finger around his head.

  Danny pulled on the balaclava and swiveled it so his eyes aligned with the holes.

  “Okay,” said Ivan. “Ready?”

  Danny took a few deep breaths and stretched his hamstrings like Krystal had taught him.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

  He grabbed two handfuls of mesh and began to scale the fence, or tried to, but the wire dug into his fingers and he struggled to gain any traction with his feet.

  Ivan grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him down. “What are you doing?” he said.

  “What does it look like? I’m climbing the fence.”

  Ivan sighed and shook his head. He grabbed the bottom of the fence and peeled it up until a hole appeared big enough for both of them to fit through.

  “Or we could do it like that,” said Danny.

  They skulked across the site, sticking to the shadows wherever they could, until they reached the area officially known as the Shit Tip, where large yellow skips containing various discarded materials were lined up side by side. One was overflowing with broken bricks and rubble, another contained random pieces of plastic tubing and empty cement bags, and the last one had various offcuts of timber poking from it.

  “Okay,” said Ivan, making a cradle with his fingers and hoisting Danny up by his foot. “You find wood, I keep lookout.”

  Danny rummaged through the skip as quietly as possible, removing any suitable planks and handing them down to Ivan, who gently stacked them on the ground. Once a pile reached a certain size, he bound it with rope at each end and connected them to make a handle in the middle. Halfway through their fourth and final pile, Ivan suddenly froze and stared off into the distance.

  “What’s wrong?” whispered Danny.

  Ivan shushed him, his eyes fixed on something in the darkness. “Somebody’s coming!” he said.

  “Shit! What do we do?” hissed Danny.

  Ivan pulled a plank of wood from one of the bundles. He weighed it in his hand and slapped it into his palm like a bat.

  “No, Ivan! No violence!”

  “You have better idea?”

  Danny frantically looked around. “Hide the wood and get in the skip!” he said.

  “What?”

  “I said get in here! Hurry!”

  Seeing a torchlight rounding the corner, Ivan grabbed the bundles of wood and chucked them out of sight. Then, grabbing Danny’s outstretched hand, he almost pulled him out of the skip as he scrambled into the metal container.

  “What now?” he said, but Danny was already smothering himself with various planks and offcuts. Ivan did the same, burying himself as deep as he could and then covering his massive frame with an even larger piece of chipboard.

  “I think it was coming from over here.” One of the security guards appeared seconds later with his partner close behind him. Danny and Ivan closed their eyes as the man panned his torch across th
e skip.

  “Probably just a rat,” said the second security guard, who looked like a shorter and rounder version of the first.

  “It must have been a fucking big rat to make that kind of ruckus.”

  “Rats can grow pretty big,” said the shorter one. “I once saw a rat as big as a dog.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “Seriously. Not like a Great Dane or anything, but it was still massive.”

  “How big?” said the taller one.

  “I don’t know. Size of a bichon frise maybe. I saw it in Leicester Square, dragging a magpie into a bush. Poor thing wasn’t even dead.”

  “A bichon frise isn’t very big,” said the taller one, clearly not convinced. “It’s barely as big as a cat.”

  “Well, whatever. That’s how big it was.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you once saw a rat the size of a cat.”

  “No. It was the size of a dog,” said the shorter one.

  “Okay, it was the size of a dog that’s the size of a cat.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So it was the size of a cat,” said the taller one.

  “No, it was the size of a dog.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ. Listen, if a rat is the same size as a dog, and the dog is the same size as a cat, then the rat, being the same size as the cat-sized dog, is therefore also the same size as a dog-sized cat. Correct?”

  “I don’t know, you’re confusing me now.”

  “Okay, look. Imagine my left fist is a cat. And my right fist is a dog.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Stu.”

  “I’m not threatening you!”

  “Then get your fists out of my face!”

  “Or else what?” he said.

  “Or else I’ll knock your bloody block off!”

  Suddenly Ivan burst from the skip like a whale breaching the waves. The guards screamed and even Danny whimpered as planks and timber rained down around them while Ivan proceeded to thrash about like a loose tarp on a lorry.

  “Run!” yelled the guard, but his partner had already gone, his torch throwing shadows all over the place as he sprinted off into the darkness.

  Ivan continued his bizarre performance for another minute or two before finally grinding to a halt. Breathing heavily, he pulled off his balaclava and used it to wipe the sweat from his brow. Danny backed away, concerned that any sudden movements might trigger another episode.

  “Sorry,” said Ivan.

  “What. The fuck. Just happened?” said Danny.

  “Is not my fault. Is the wood bug.”

  “What… wood bug?”

  “This wood bug!” said Ivan. He aimed a trembling finger at something that on closer inspection turned out to be a wood louse.

  “A wood louse?” said Danny, ripping off his balaclava. “You almost made me shit my pants because of a fucking wood louse?”

  “It bite me!” said Ivan, pointing to a perfectly unbitten forearm.

  “Not unless you’re made of wood, it didn’t!”

  “Well… it was thinking to bite me! I could see it in his eyes.”

  “I can’t believe the great Ivan Shevchenko is scared of wood lice,” said Danny as he gently rubbed his heart.

  “Ivan is scared of nothing!” said Ivan.

  Danny’s eyes widened. He pointed at his friend. “Ivan, don’t panic, but I think there’s one on your shoulder!”

  Ivan resumed his frantic dance, running in circles and swatting his body until he saw Danny laughing.

  “What were you saying?” said Danny.

  Ivan frowned. “I was saying, good luck carrying wood on your own,” he said, tramping off across the building site.

  “Wait!” said Danny, his smile wilting. “Ivan! Come back! It was a joke!”

  CHAPTER 24

  Danny woke up the following morning to find Will and Mo playing video games in the living room.

  “Video games?” he said. “On a beautiful day like this?”

  The boys didn’t respond, their eyes fixed on the screen as they ran around trying to murder each other with chain saws.

  “You kids should be outside, not glued to the TV.”

  “It’s raining, Mr. Malooley,” said Mo without looking up. Danny looked at the rain drumming against the window.

  “That? That’s nothing. And anyway, a bit of rain never hurt anybody.”

  “My Uncle Faisal drowned in a flood,” said Mo.

  “Oh. Right. Sorry to hear that, Mo. But look, the sun’s going to come out any minute.” Danny pointed at the window, ignoring the slate-colored clouds that stretched for as far as the eye could see.

  “I don’t know. It’s raining kind of heavy. We might get sick or something.”

  “It’s important for kids to get sick, Mo. It helps to strengthen their immune systems. And if you do catch a cold, you don’t have to go to school, so you know, win-win, right?”

  Mo and Will didn’t look convinced. Danny resorted to plan B.

  “Fine,” he said, pulling out his wallet and taking out a tenner. “Here. Go and enjoy yourselves.”

  Mo looked at Will. Will shook his head. Mo looked at Danny.

  “No offense, Mr. Malooley, but I think our lives are worth a little more than that.”

  “Lives? You’re not going to die out there, Mo.”

  “That’s what my Uncle Faisal thought,” said Mo. Danny sighed.

  “Okay, okay.” Danny fished another ten-pound note from his wallet and offered them both to the boys.

  Mo looked at Will. Will nodded.

  “And don’t come back until the evening!” shouted Danny as they ran off to get their raincoats.

  * * *

  Once they’d gone, Danny called Ivan, who arrived with a toolbox in one hand and a foil parcel in the other.

  “From Ivana?” said Danny, smiling.

  “What is this? KGB interrogation?” Ivan grumbled as he pushed his way past Danny.

  They carried the bundles of wood upstairs from the disused garage they’d stored them in (but only after Danny had reassured Ivan that the planks were free from flesh-eating wood lice) and dumped them outside Will’s door. Then, comparing notes on how best to proceed, the two men got down to business. They worked from midmorning until early evening, only stopping briefly for lunch and another time when Ivan had to explain to Ivana why he’d decided to spend his Saturday with Danny instead of taking her shopping at Westfield, a conversation that Danny was reluctantly dragged into when Ivana demanded to hear his voice as proof that Ivan was indeed where he said he was and not with the woman from flat fifty-four (who, according to Ivan, had simply locked herself out in her bathrobe and knocked on his door for assistance, which perfectly explained why Ivana found the woman seminaked in their house but didn’t do much to explain why Ivan was also half-dressed).

  The task proved harder than expected, not least because the room was so small and Ivan was so big and neither of them really knew what they were doing. They’d only just finished by the time Will walked through the door with a small box of leftover pizza in his hand. He found the two men in the kitchen, their faces and clothes speckled with paint and their cups of tea garnished with sawdust.

  “All right, mate?” said Danny. Will stared at them from the doorway the way a train conductor stares at a student card he knows is fake but can’t quite prove it. “You survived, then?”

  Will nodded, but the frown remained.

  “Is that pizza?” said Ivan, pointing at the box. Will nodded again and offered the box to Ivan, who slapped one slice between the remaining two and shoveled the pizza sandwich into his mouth.

  Will pointed at Danny’s clothes and turned his palms towards the ceiling.

  Danny smiled. “All will be revealed,” he said, putting down his tea. “But first you’ve got to close your eyes.”

  Will did as instructed, and Danny covered his eyes to stop him from peeking. He carefully ushered him out of the room and guided him through the flat until they came to a h
alt in the doorway of Will’s bedroom.

  “Okay,” he said, taking his hands away as Ivan appeared behind them. “You can look now.”

  Will opened his eyes and stared at his room before closing them again and repeating the process. Danny watched him closely, nervously waiting for a sign of approval, but Will’s face was inscrutable, like a poker player with a Botox addiction. The longer the moment went on, the more worried Danny became, first that he’d done the wrong thing and then that his son had connected the dots and sussed out his furry alter ego. It wasn’t until he saw Will smile that his pulse began to stabilize.

  Thomas the Tank Engine had suffered a fatal collision with a couple of strip knives with which Danny and Ivan had spent the morning hacking at the wallpaper. In his place were two lush coats of parakeet-green paint, the top layer still sticky to the touch (as Will accidentally discovered when he probed it with his finger). His old bed still occupied its place in the corner, but now it was closer to the corner of the ceiling than the floor, suspended almost six feet in the air by a sturdy structure of planks and posts that Danny and Ivan had spent the afternoon hammering together, much to the annoyance of the neighbors. A homemade ladder ran up the side of it, and beneath the bed was a study area complete with a desk, a table lamp, and a chair from the dinner table that Danny vowed to replace with a proper office chair just as soon as he could afford it. It wasn’t the desk itself that caught Will’s attention but the picture frame on the wall behind it. Staring back at him was a collage of pictures that Danny had spent the night compiling, all of them taken from Liz’s photo albums, which hadn’t been opened since the crash. Some of them were just of her, others of her and Will, and right there in the middle of the collage was a selfie Liz had taken of all three of them at London Zoo, smiling in front of the monkey enclosure with a photobombing spider monkey grinning through the bars behind them. Stuck above each of them were headings that Danny had made: Mum for Liz, Dad for himself, Monkey for Will, and Will for the monkey.

  Will reached out and touched the picture, his fingers shaking slightly. He didn’t see Ivan pat Danny on the back, and he didn’t hear Danny step into the room until he felt his dad’s hand on his shoulder. Will hugged him as hard as he could. Nobody spoke. Nobody needed to.